Anonymous is declaring war on countries

Global war

Anonymous is now targeting sovereign nations, declaring war on countries that do not agree with it, after it launched attacks against the government websites of Zimbabwe and Tunisia.

The group has previously targeted companies such as Mastercard and PayPal with distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), after they withdrew their support for the Wikileaks website.

Once Tunisia tried to block access to leaked Wikileaks cables about the country it was game on.

Websites that appear to have been brought down by the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack include that of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the government's official website.

A statement posted on Anonymous-related websites explained the reason for the attack was that the Tunisian government wanted to control the present with falsehoods and misinformation in order to impose the future by keeping the truth hidden from its citizens.

Tunisia is not exactly known for its democratic freedoms or free speech so expecting it to turn around its policies for the sake of Wikileaks was a little optimistic. However it does show that foreign governments can be susceptible to Western hackers who can make their lives difficult.

Nations Targeted

Indeed, the attacks are thought to be so serious that Scotland Yard has confirmed it has been investigating the Internet vigilante group for some time.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has created a taskforce, which has been lumbered with the unfortunate moniker of WikiLeaks Task Force (or WTF for short).

And in a new turn of events the hacking group is switching away from companies, and now seems to betargeting countries that are hostile to Wikileaks.

According to The Guardian newspaper, a number of Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco have been actively seeking to shut down Wikileaks. The Anonymous group has already attacked Zimbabwe, and now countries such as Tunisia are reportedly trying to block access to the leaked Wikileaks cables.

Other Attacks

Last month the British national security advisor Sir Peter Ricketts, warned that WikiLeaks supporters may attack government sites, such as The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and HM Revenues and Customs (HMRC).

And Citrix CTO Simon Crosby also recently warned that the year 2010 heralded the start of national Cyber Wars, with the Stuxnet attack on Iran, the alleged Chinese government attack on Google, and of course WikiLeaks.

Of course it should be noted that Anonymous has been active for a while now.

In November the group took down the website of the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) as revenge for the legal action against The Pirate Bay.